Political Conflict and Land Tenure in the Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Abstract

From March 1981, when a radical local administration took office, the municipality of Juchitán, Oaxaca, located in the Southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec, has been in the national (and more recently the international) spotlight. The newly elected officials were from the COCEI, the Coalición de Obreros, Campesinos y Estudiantes del Istmo (Coalition of Workers, Peasants and Students of the Isthmus), a radical local political group which had, for tactical reasons, formed an electoral alliance with the Mexican Communist Party (since August 1981 the leading component of the PSUM or Unified Socialist Party of Mexico, organized to contest the 5982 presidential election). Land reform was one of the major issues — along with municipal corruption and the paucity of educational, health and other services — mobilized substantial proportions of a largely agricultural-based population to support the COCEI against the PRI, the Revolutionary Institutional Party which has ruled Mexico without serious challenge since 1929.